by Mel Sterling
Today she would visit a long-term care facility on the far slopes of the West Hills. One of her former clients lived there—if sitting in chairs by windows, staring blankly, could be called living—and she wanted to talk to him one more time in the hopes of stirring something. Anything. Maybe if she showed him Aaron's pictures, before the addiction and now, when he was so thin and worn, Rory could give her a clue. She could ask about the lady, too. Maybe it would bring a response.
After her shower and breakfast, Tess dressed in a pair of slacks and a long-sleeved top, and pulled her hair back into a tortoise-shell barrette. She slipped her cell phone in her purse, along with a slim journal for taking notes. As an afterthought, she picked up the silvery hazelnut from the curio shelf and tucked it into the back pouch. It would look interesting in her office. She'd swap it out for something else.
Ridge Manor looked like a large house from the outside. All brick and white pillars and windows. But inside, it was still a hospital, with easy-clean floors and walls, and secured windows that insured the residents stayed inside. Tess signed in at the desk and pinned her visitor badge to her shirt pocket. She followed an attendant to the day room, where one of her former clients was spending his morning in an armchair next to a stack of puzzles and games, which he ignored in favor of staring up at the light fixtures.
"Hi, Rory," Tess said quietly, touching his shoulder. "It's Tess Gordon."
Rory Morris slowly turned his head to look at her, but Tess saw no recognition in his blank brown eyes. Still, it was a response, which was better than some days, when he wouldn't even turn his head.
She pulled up a chair and sat facing him. "Rory, I need your help." She opened a folder and put a picture of Aaron, a happy twenty-year-old at a family barbecue, in Rory's hand. "This guy was just like you, once. Happy, healthy, good-looking."
Rory's gaze drifted slowly to the photo, and then just as slowly lifted ceilingward. Tess touched the top of his head and redirected his attention. "Then something happened to him, just like it happened to you. He started taking something. Losing himself, just like you did." She slipped another photo, taken just a couple of weeks ago, into Rory's hand. Aaron was thin and drawn, his gaze blank and uninterested, unfocused and dull. His dark skin had grayed, looked almost ashy with dust.
"You've got to help me, Rory. I don't want to lose another person to this stuff. Come on." She squeezed his hand where it held the pictures. "Come on. Tell me what you remember. Where you went, who you met. Aaron sneaks out of his house at night. Last night he went underneath the Burnside Bridge—"
Wait. Had she seen Rory's eyes flicker?
"Is it the bridge? Is that where he gets it? I didn't think so, not after last night, because he met a girl there—"
"The lady." Rory's whisper was so faint it could have been an exhalation.
A frisson of excitement and triumph hummed through her. The lady! It was a link, a key. It had to be. Tess felt the tingle of knowledge tantalizing her, just out of reach. The lady. The woman at the riverside. Rory. Drugs. Aaron. It must all fit together, but she could not find the proper pieces and turn them the right way. She fumbled in her bag for her journal, opening it randomly to a blank page. Her pen had come unclipped from the journal, and a quick shake didn't turn it up. She couldn't afford to lose Rory's attention, thready as it was, so she kept talking while she emptied half her purse into her lap. Wallet, keys, the silver hazelnut, old receipts, her phone, a pack of gum, and finally the pen. She grabbed it, clicking the point out, just as Rory leaned forward and snatched the hazelnut, letting the photos of Aaron fall into the space between his chair cushion and arm.
"Rory, Rory...here, let me have that. If you'll just look at Aaron, see how he's fading, like you did..." Tess tried to put the pictures back in one hand while she pried at the other to retrieve the hazelnut. No telling what Rory might do with it, in his strange fugue state. But Rory would not unclench his hand, and Tess was afraid to cause a disturbance. Already a couple of other residents were staring. She repacked her bag except for the journal and pen.
"Tell me more about the lady. Who is she?"
Rory's head fell back against the armchair, and he closed his eyes. His mouth went slack. The photos slid from his fingers again, and Tess, defeated, returned them to the folder. She touched his arm, but he was not responsive. She tried once more to pry open the hand with the silver nut in it, but though the rest of Rory seemed limp and helpless, that hand was rigid and unmovable.
Rory had gone away again, and there was nothing more to be gained by continuing to question him. Tess went to murmur to the attendant that Rory had something of hers in his hand and they should take it away in case it caused problems. The attendant came and talked to Rory gently, taking Rory's clenched fist in his large hand. Finger by finger, he opened the hand, to show Tess Rory's empty palm.
"Nothing here. Maybe he's hidden it. I'll get him to stand up and you can check the chair."
While Tess rummaged beneath the seat cushion and shook out the knitted afghan draped over the arm, the attendant checked Rory's mouth and clothing.
"It was in his hand, I know it was."
"Did you check the floor?" The attendant let Rory sag back into the armchair. "Maybe he dropped it."
But more searching didn't turn up the nut. The attendant asked the other residents if they'd seen it, but no one had. Rory slumped in the chair, more boneless than Tess had ever seen him. In the end, she left her contact information and a description of the silver nut, in case someone should find it. As she walked to the door, she turned for one more glance at Rory. He still lay in the chair, eyes closed and hands loose in his lap, but now a faint smile curved his mouth instead of the slack jaw of the catatonic.
You know more than you're telling. Tess scowled to herself, wondering what in the world Rory could have done with the trinket without leaving the chair. There was no place to hide it that they hadn't searched, and if he'd managed to swallow it, though she couldn't see how, there was no telling what harm it would do him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THERE SHE WAS AGAIN.
THOMAS should have known she wouldn't be able to stay away. She was like a dog with a bone, worrying at it until she got to the marrow. He stood at a slit window of his trow-hold and looked out across Underbridge, where Tess was moving determinedly from person to person and fae to fae, meeting with blank faces, rudeness or outright laughter.
A sigh gusted out of him. This couldn't end well, and he'd better go down into the market and stop her before she found a fae who would do business with her. Thomas knew that the likes of Sharpwit left the humans alone, but not all fae were so particular or circumspect in their dealings with humans. For a change the redcaps were not tending their cauldron of bloody dye, but there was at least one kelpie dripping about in the rainy evening, and a slender drug rehab counselor would be as tasty as a zonked-out junkie girl, once she'd been drowned in the Willamette.
Thomas slid the narrow chunk of concrete back into place and closed his window on Underbridge. His eagerness to see Tess, a full five days before they were supposed to meet at the coffee shop again, surprised him. Even if it couldn't be under favorable circumstances, he wanted to be with her, hear her voice, maybe even feel her touch again. He hurried up the spiral stairs carved from the solid concrete of the bridge pier to the cavernous, slightly damp room beneath, where he kept his clothes and his kitchen. He shrugged into the oilskin and took a moment to compose himself enough to become Thomas Human again, instead of Thomas Trow. He patted his pockets from the outside, checking for his stone blade and the six large iron spike nails he carried—well wrapped to save himself from the iron—for protection. He grabbed the wooden bucket of grubs he'd collected for Sharpwit, and went up the rest of the stairs to the hidden door that accessed the network of support girders.
In his human form, it was less painful to walk along the iron girders. He hurried along the horizontals, on the lookout for observers, swinging past uprights, until
he was able to drop the ten feet to the ground in the fenced area behind the pumping station. A moment or two later he slipped through his secret glamoured gap in the chain link, instead of climbing the fence.
It wasn't difficult finding Tess in the gloom of Underbridge, though she'd moved on from the boggart disguised as a hobo sleeping in a pile of stained blankets, and was heading toward the kelpie. Thomas cursed under his breath as he rushed to Sharpwit's stall and set down the bucket of grubs with a thump, nearly knocking over a pair of brownies waiting for a snack. Tess must really think she was onto something, to come back and be so persistent. He could hear her talking to the kelpie as he approached.
"So I'm looking for some stuff for my friend. He's really sick, but he can't help it, you know? Something called 'the lady.' I promised I'd bring him back some. Just a little hit, you know, to quiet the shakes. Just one."
Bitter bluebell throats and hairy ivy feet, thought Thomas. Did she think the kelpie was a pusher? He strode through a group of hobs who were gaming with knucklebones, disturbing their play but ignoring their shrill cries and their pummeling fists on his shins.
The kelpie stared at Tess hungrily, his eyes hot and intimate. Thomas could see through the glamour to the horse-shape just beneath the surface, a shape running with liquid and clothed in waterweed, teeth harsh as bad dreams and just as vicious. All the kelpie needed was for her to agree to walk away with him. It would take her toward the river, and Tess would not return from that walk.
Thomas broke into a run. His sudden movement caught the attention of half the market—just what she needs, for me to draw all eyes to her—including Tess and the kelpie. She turned with a delighted smile.
"Thomas! Fancy meeting you here."
"Yes, fancy," drawled the kelpie, not looking away from Tess. Her head began to turn back toward the irresistible allure of the handsome form that overlaid the water-horse.
"Back off." Thomas glared at the kelpie, whose pale, river-wrinkled fingertips halted an inch from Tess's arm. "She's not interested."
"She certainly seems to be," the kelpie asserted. "We're going to take a stroll and have a chat."
"Not tonight."
Tess watched the byplay for a moment, then interrupted. "I was just asking about my friend and his problem, Thomas. That's all. No harm done."
"You shouldn't be here, T—" He stopped himself from speaking her truename just in time, because it had hovered on his lips with such pleasure from the moment he saw her from his window. "It's not safe." He was relieved that his arrival seemed to have broken the kelpie's spell.
"I'm all right." She turned fully toward him at last and the kelpie thrust an ugly gesture at the two of them behind her back before slinking away into the evening drizzle.
"You don't even have a raincoat," Thomas fretted at her, "and you're talking to dangerous strangers. I'm not certain you understand what 'all right' means."
Now Tess seemed offended. "I have adequate judgment and can take care of myself. You're making me sound like an idiot. Surely you can't mean that."
Thomas drew a deep breath to control the turmoil inside him. He reminded himself Tess could not see through the fae glamour and had no idea she'd been dealing with a creature from a hidden world, one with different rules and moral code, not to mention menus. In her mind, she'd been talking to a street boy, a very pretty and forward street boy. She didn't know that pretty boy would have drowned her and dined on her delicious, salty liver without thinking twice about it.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw that the market seemed back to normal on the surface, but the denizens were still furtively eyeing them. He'd drawn a target on Tess as surely as if he'd walked into the center of the milling crowd and shouted, "Look, a foolish human! Free for the taking!"
He'd have to do something about that, but what? He couldn't work magic well enough to throw a glamour over Tess to change her appearance, nor make the fae forget they'd seen him take her from a kelpie. The best he could do later would be to spread a tale about the kelpie and make the water-horse seem at fault somehow. Maybe something about how the city seemed to be concerned about the number of drowned and gnawed girls that washed up lately. Urban fae well knew they had to keep their inhuman behavior within limits in order not to be discovered by the hundreds of thousands of humans living so near their mound.
It might work. The market fae knew him and trusted him, as far as Unseelie trusted anything not Unseelie. They knew he did the Queen's bidding, and for all they knew, he had her ear. After all, he'd been her lover once upon a time, in a fairytale. One of the rare few who survived their trysts with her.
"Thomas? Just let him go." Tess drew his attention back from the darkness where the kelpie had gone to squat near the railing along the riverbank, glaring at them, his eyes shining like coins in the dark. Good thing Tess couldn't see what those eyes belonged to.
"I'm sorry. It's just...like I said, it's not safe here, and he looked like he was feeling a little too comfortable. How've you been?"
To his relief, she smiled. The stilted moment had passed. "Fine, though work's a bit frustrating at the moment. You?"
"The same." A rattling noise behind him alerted him to the hobs, still playing knucklebones. And listening. Thomas reached out and tucked her hand into the bend of his arm. "I'm up for coffee, even though it's way ahead of schedule. You?" Her fingers were warm, and with the touch, he could more effectively convince her with the little fae magic he possessed.
She resisted, but only for a moment, then his charm pulled her along, out of the market. "I was trying to find out more about Aaron and his dealer. That's what I was asking that boy about when you came along."
"So I gathered. I'm serious about how dangerous it is here in Underbridge."
"What an interesting name you've given it, like Goose Hollow or Irving, as if it's a Portland neighborhood." When he quickened his pace, aware he was giving away too much, she matched his stride and kept chatting, her hand snug in his elbow. "It really is sort of a neighborhood, after all. So many of these people live here, more or less."
"That's why I know so much about them. Look, why don't you let me do the asking around for you? They know me, and I'm big enough that no one messes with me."
"Nobody's messed with me, either." They paused at the corner to wait for the walk light. Thomas nonchalantly turned up the cuffs of his oilskin sleeves and popped his collar, then retied his belt knot backward. It was the closest he could come to turning his coat inside out in order to thwart any pursuers.
"That kid tonight...if he'd managed to get you to come along, he'd have tried to rape you. Worse, maybe." Thomas turned his head to the right, where he could see the ornate red gate into Chinatown. He subtly increased his pace and hoped Tess would not suggest cutting through there tonight. But he didn't want to make Tess suspicious by resisting entering Chinatown, either. She picked up on nuance far too quickly.
"How can you know that?" Tall as she was, she still had to look up at him, just a little.
"There's our light." They crossed and continued walking west. Thomas let out a breath when the red gate was out of sight.
"Seriously, Thomas. Do you know him?"
"Yes. And he might look like a nice enough kid, but he's not."
"I didn't get a bad vibe from him, and I work with addicts and thugs all the time. I've learned to trust my instincts."
Thomas stifled a sigh. "Just this once, please trust mine." He was going to have to do something about Tess. If she kept messing around Underbridge, she'd end up hurt or worse. If the Queen got word that a human was on the track of one of the Queen's lovers, it would definitely be the "worse" option.
Tess pulled her hand from his arm and knelt on the sidewalk to tie her shoe. Thomas heard her say, "Huh. Look at that," as she reached for something tucked into a cavity, a bit of damage at the base of a light post.
Thomas saw the glimmer of fae magic too late; it was in her hand, and Tess was smiling.
"I find t
he oddest, most interesting things down here in Old Town. Look." She held up her hand, palm flat. A glass thimble sat there, glinting with the electric purple that was the Queen's magical signature. He knew Tess would only see the clear, greenish glass of the thimble.
Thomas's gut clenched sickly, and it was all he could do not to strike the thing from her hand. Instead he reached out slowly, taking the thimble as if he only wanted to examine it.
Those are my possessions, and I will not have them taken from me.
With a shiver, he knew what the Queen had been talking about at last. But he was no closer to understanding why they were at or near the goblin market.
The golden band on his left arm began to warm, and he saw his mistake in touching the thimble. Because he had, the Queen had been alerted to the movement of her trinket.
He had to get Tess out of here, and now. He glanced at the wristwatch on his arm, the one he wore because certain human devices entertained him, and because it helped to dress like a human if he wanted to pass as one. "You know, I was so pleased to see you again that I forgot about my evening appointment. I can't go with you for coffee. We're still on for our date Friday?"
Tess blinked, slowly rising. "Sure, Thomas. I wouldn't miss it."
He saw her uncertainty at his sudden departure, a little line of concern puckering between her brows. Give her something else to think about. He smiled, feeling the armband burning. Any moment, if he didn't head for the fairy mound, he'd smell the stench of his own flesh cooking. The Queen would not be ignored for long.
"Thanks. Where's your car?"
She pointed up the street. "In the parking garage, for a change. That ticket cost me an arm and a leg."
"Promise me you'll go straight there? I don't like the thought of you blundering around Underbridge without me, especially tonight."
"Don't be silly, I—"
